Notes: Let's delve deeper into the day-to-day, shall we?
Title: Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards: Ch. 6, Part 1
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Chapter Six, Part One
A Brief Education
The next morning seem to come far too quickly, but at least this time Hiram was awake and downstairs when the knock on his door sounded. He was wearing a loose pair of colorful trousers he’d gotten when he was pretending to be a jongleur—one of the many side quests on his misspent youth—and a thick, fluffy cardigan in the brightest shade of gray imaginable on the top half, like a spun cloud had been shaped into a torso with some oversized sleeves popped on. It was still early enough that he could get away with the thickness of it due to the morning chill. Put a cup of tea in his hand and a rabbit across his lap, and Hiram couldn’t get much more comfortable. In fact…
“Come in,” he called out, unwilling to shift Knight from where he was resting. A moment later the door cracked open, pale light coming in with it. Then it opened enough to admit a person, and Letty stepped into the house. She was hesitant for a few seconds, but when Hiram did nothing but look at her expectantly, she got some more of her proud bearing back.
“Good morning,” he said pleasantly. “Would you care for a cup of tea?” He only had the one other cup right now, but it would do in a pinch for a few children. Speaking of… “You didn’t come alone, did you?”
“No,” Letty said with a little smile. “Most of my brothers and sisters are at school today, so I brought the ones who aren’t.” She turned and made a hand-waving motion, and then an older boy—about fourteen, likely, and lanky like a colt—and a little child no more than three came inside. “Mam’s got the baby at home, and Da’s visiting the shops today,” and the look on her face told Hiram exactly which “shop” he was going to be visiting, “so I brought Jem and Rickie with me.”
“Ah.” Hiram looked the pair over. They couldn’t be more different—Jem was every inch a teenage boy, scruffy, faintly unwashed, and with a sulky expression on his face that said he’d far rather be sleeping in than helping some vagabond at the edge of town, while Rickie was a round-faced little lad with flaxen curls and enormous hazel eyes. He had a stuffy of indeterminate species in his hands, and he wasn’t wearing any shoes. “Welcome, gentlemen.”
“What now?” Jem asked, then winced as Letty hit him on the arm.
“There’s hot water on the stove if you’d care to make yourself some tea,” Hiram said. “Just one cup until my order gets here later in the week, but there should be enough for you to refill it several times. Take all the space you need for preparing your meals for today, and other than that…” He gestured down at Knight. “Well, I would get up but I rather think he wouldn’t like it.”
“He does look very cozy,” Letty agreed with a grin.
“Can’t believe you didn’t want to eat him,” Jem said, then got another smack for it. “Ow, what? He’s huge! We could have had stew meat for a week!”
His sister’s glare had him cowing a moment later. “Knight has been behind some of our best morphs for five years,” Letty snapped. “And he never eats the babies, and he guards the other bunnies in the hutch! If any rabbit deserves a happy retirement, it’s him!”
“But I’m hungry!”
“Then eat,” Hiram interjected, and the siblings looked at him abashedly. “You did bring food, yes?”
Letty nodded. “Plenty, thank you.”
“Good. Take your time and eat your fill, and then if you’d be so kind as to get started on the hutch first, I would appreciate it.”
Letty nodded again, but Jem looked suspicious. “What’re you going to be doing all day, then?”
“Jem!”
“Making tonics,” Hiram said, refusing to take the bait. “Writing out labels for when my jars arrive. Folding envelopes to hold medicines for my clients. Sitting here with my feet up and a bunny in my lap. Whatever I want, really.” He smiled. “If you expect me to keep anything like a regular schedule, you’re going to find yourself disappointed. I…” He frowned. “Where has the little one gone?” Not upstairs, Hiram had a charm of dissuasion on the banister, and not down into the cellar…
“Oh, many heavens,” Letty sighed. “Jem, will you—”
“I’ll find him.” The boy darted outside, and Letty came closer to the chair, her eyes on Knight.
“Sorry about that. Rickie is very much a wanderer; he never stays in one place for more than a minute if he can help it. Mam’s despaired of him staying seated at school for long enough to learn his letters, even with Master Surrus keeping an eye on things.”
Ah, someone new. “Master Surrus is the town’s schoolmaster, then?”
“Yes, sir. Avery Surrus. You probably didn’t meet him on market day,” she said blithely as she reached out and ran a tender hand over Knight’s back. “He doesn’t leave home much if he’s not teaching. Always has his head in a book.”
My kind of person. “What does he look like?”
“Oh, old. I mean, not as old as you, but—” She slapped a hand over her mouth as her cheeks went pink. “I mean—”
Hiram laughed. Everything was old to a girl of fifteen, he knew. Misha had been the same way, even though he’d been a decade younger back then. You’re so old, Uncle Xerome, hurry up!
“I think he’s in his thirties,” Letty said once she’d gotten over the worst of her embarrassment. “He wasn’t born here, but he’s been our teacher for the past decade or so. He’s only really friends with Master Spindlestep, but he’s kind to everyone. Not in the best of health—he gets sick it seems like every month—but he’d a good teacher. We didn’t even have a town school before he got here, and now everyone my age and down knows how to spell and do math and say all the prayers in the original Elvish and everything.”
A friend to Master Spindlestep… Hiram’s mind went back to the man who’d walked so lightly into the tailor’s shop, and who’d startled so badly to learn that he and his friend weren’t alone. Brilliant blue eyes in a face that could have been carved from ivory, thick brown curls obscuring his forehead, and a bone-deep wariness in every line of his body. “Interesting.”
“Found him!” Jem called from outside. A moment later Rickie toddled back in, a beaming smile on his cherubic face. “Look sharp for him, I’m getting started on the hutch!” There was a moment’s silence, then— “Bring food!”
“You look sharp for him!” Letty shouted back. “It’s like having a dragon in the house,” she added with the air of someone who was used to cooking for a lot of people. “Mam can never keep him and Pom full. Pom’s twelve,” she added. “He won’t get excused from school until he’s thirteen. Mayor’s rules.”
Hiram was surprised. “I didn’t think your mayor was such a stickler for things like education,” he ventured.
“Oh, not this mayor, sir,” Letty explained as she headed to the stove, pulling several pieces of wood from the stack and fanning the flame before laying them inside. “The former mayor was a knight of Theophrastus. He believed very firmly in educating everyone, not just the lords and the like. Mayor Hurst tried to rescind the law, but the people like it so much they didn’t listen to him. Then he tried to fine people for sending their children to school and almost got his house burned down as a result, so he stopped after that.”
“Good on you,” Hiram said brightly. “A good education is invaluable.”
Letty shrugged as she took a satchel off her shoulder and began to pull vegetables from it. “Da thinks it’s a waste of time to educate us girls, but he’s the one leaving me with control of the stall on market day. Wouldn’t do much good there if I didn’t know how to handle my sums. Still, I wish…”
“What do you wish?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, sir.”
…
Outside, a small body slipped through the rotten slats of the garden wall and trotted fearlessly into the forest. His sister thought his brother was watching him; his brother assumed his sister was doing it, and Hiram didn’t know any better.
He wandered through the dappled sunlight, happy and aimless as only a child who preferred their own company could be. It was nice out here in the woods, far away from the loudness of his parents and siblings. The new house was better, but Master Hiram made him feel shy. Better to be outside where no one could see him.
He followed tree roots and animal paths, briefly paused to dunk himself in a small creek that had a school of tiny dancing fish playing in it, and then finally found the edge of the forest. He was beginning to get tired and wanted a place to sit down, and found a nice tree stump—not too tall—and pulled himself up onto it. He nestled right up next to the pretty cat lady already sitting there, then reached for one of her paws. When he pressed on it, silvery, razor-sharp claws shot out the ends of her toes.
“Ooh,” Rickie whispered.
“Child…”
He looked up at the smooth, elegant face of the cat lady. “Yes?”
She smiled at him, showing her fanged teeth. “Do you like riddles?”
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